


Conspiracy Theories

by BoxOnTheNile



Series: Moral Dysregulation [1]
Category: Time Bombs (Podcast), Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, and lovelace is sobrero, jacobi is midland, look just trust me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-06 20:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxOnTheNile/pseuds/BoxOnTheNile
Summary: Goddard Futuristics has been gone for two years when Mark Midland freezes on the job. He thought he left "Jacobi" behind him, but someone has other plans.Also, prodigal assholes, child locks, and reality shaking secrets.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Broke: time bombs is the Jacobi backstory  
> Woke: time bombs is wolf359 postcanon and "Midland" and "Sobrero" were glaring at each other the whole time while the other two were utterly oblivious to their shared history

Mark Midland has been off probation for two months when he freezes on the job. It’s only for a second, but Teller has never seen him freeze before, so he notices. Teller also doesn’t really blame him, because he’s never seen an explosive like this before. It’s a mess, but there’s a beauty to the disaster, and Teller has no idea where to even start with it.

Midland hesitates when he sees it, then gets to work, taking it apart with such efficiency it’s almost as though he built it himself. 

Teller would be completely willing to write it off, if it weren’t for how _pale_ Midland got.

Midland comes to him later. “Hey, boss?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’d you drop off that reporter on New Year’s?”

Teller looks at him for a long moment. He’d thought something was between the two, with the way Midland had almost bolted when he saw her the first time and how Sobrero had shot him pointed looks throughout the night.

“I’m not helping you stalk your ex-girlfriend,” Teller says. He expects Midland to respond in one of his usual ways, with a quip about professionalism or a heavy sigh, but he _laughs._ It’s not a good laugh. It’s bitter and frightened and angry and it is not a sound that should be made by Midland.

“I have ex-boyfriends, not ex-girlfriends, first of all. Second, if you _don’t_ , the next case we take will probably kill me and take you as collateral damage.”

“Okay, uh… there’s a lot there to unpack,” Radio Bob says. Teller jumps; Midland doesn’t so much as twitch. His face is shadowed.

Teller weighs the pros and cons and comes to a decision. “If you get arrested, I’ve never met you.” 

He grabs his keys.

 

* * *

 

Two and a half years ago, the six survivors of the USS Hephaestus tore Goddard Futuristics to the ground, and Daniel Jacobi disappeared. Minkowski and Lovelace let him. He needed time to grieve, time to figure what to do with himself next. He would be back, they figured. Where else could he go?

But he didn’t. And as time went on, and they settled into new lives, they accepted he was just… gone.

Then Lovelace, or “Tatiana Sobrero”, stepped into the bomb squad office and came face to face with the prodigal asshole himself, and he called himself “Midland.”

Currently, the prodigal asshole is staring out at the streets of New York through the windows of Teller’s car. His mind reels. Honestly, he’s not surprised one slipped past the government during the mass incarceration of Goddard higher-ups and SI-5, but why did it have to be one that could build his bombs?

“Midland?”

Jacobi doesn’t startle. He’s wound tighter than a spring, but he was trained better than that. “Yes, Teller?”

“You gonna explain this anytime soon?”

“I would prefer to handle all the explaining at once, so I’m going to wait until I can talk to Love—to Miss Sobrero.”

The car rolls to a stop. Teller barely finishes pointing out the correct door before Jacobi is throwing himself out of the car and bounding up the steps. He pounds on the wood. “Lovelace, you have forty-five seconds to open the fucking door before I pick the lock,” he yells.

“Lovelace?” Radio Bob mutters behind him, and his name once more fills Jacobi with a sense of dramatic irony, just like “Unit 214” and the whole fucking job in general.

“Thirty seconds, Captain!” Jacobi beats on the door again.

There’s hurried footsteps inside, and Isabel Lovelace opens the door and grabs Jacobi’s wrist. “What. _The hell._ Do you want?”

“SI-5 is trying to kill me,” he says, and the twin shrieks of _“What?”_ behind him are completely ignored. 

Lovelace inhales deeply, holds, lets it go. “You’d better come inside, then.” She waits until all three have crossed the threshold and clustered in her tiny kitchen before closing the door with a decisive _click_. “Well?”

“So!” Jacobi claps his hands and holds them, turning to Teller and Radio Bob. “What do _you_ know about Goddard Futuristics?”

“What _don’t_ I know?” Bob says. “I followed that trainwreck from the beginning. It was the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories: human experimentation, personal militaries, _war crimes_ —it’s insane. And a couple survivors from one of their interstellar outposts dragged all of it to light. Anonymously, of course; the government wanted to keep them safe, so no one knows who they are.”

“Congratulations,” Lovelace deadpans. “You’re in the room with two of them.”

The silence is oppressive, and Jacobi can’t stand it. He heads for Lovelace’s fridge, pulls it open, and nearly sighs in relief. There’s a bottle of wine. If they’re talking about this, he doesn’t want to be sober. 

“Put it back, Jacobi,” Lovelace says.

“You’re not my boss,” he says, yanking the cork. He pulls from the bottle, and the wine is dry and bitter. “God, I should’ve guessed you like cabernet.”

“And you prefer whiskey?”

“Fuck you.” He takes another drink. “Bob, ask your questions before you explode.”

“You—you're a survivor of _Goddard Futuristics_?”

Jacobi knows what a good person would do. A good person would tell it straight— _SI-5, actually; you know, the **bad guys**_ —but Jacobi has never been a good person. 

He takes another drink.

“Miss… Sobrero—” Teller is cut off when Lovelace lifts a hand.

“Lovelace. If we're doing this, it's Captain Lovelace. And, yes. We're _those_ survivors.”

Radio Bob looks ready to vibrate out of his own skin. “I have so many questions. How much of what the government released was true? How much wasn't? What about the rumors of mind control? Of aliens?”

Lovelace looks profoundly uncomfortable. Jacobi drops the bottle, and it shatters on the floor, wine spreading across the tile _like Alana/Minkowski/Lovelace/ **his** blood in zero-g, horrifyingly beautiful and_—

He jumps when Lovelace touches his arm. She visibly struggles to pick a name, before, “You alright, Jacobi?”

“Fine,” he says.

“Midland… isn't your name, is it?” Bob says softly. 

“Legally, yes, it is. But I've been Daniel Jacobi for… a lot longer.”

“Okay, questions later,” Lovelace says. “Long story short—” Jacobi flinches violently— “we were in space, we almost died, we didn't, and now I'm pretty sure Midland? Jacobi? Fuck it, Jacobi's trying to forget it ever happened. What do you mean SI-5 is trying to kill you?”

She's looking at Jacobi now, all of them are, and he can't meet their gaze. Instead, he crouches and starts to stack the bigger pieces of broken glass. “I mean what I said. One of the bombs tonight was SI… was _mine._ I built that bomb, or at least I designed it. The schematics were Goddard property, which meant all of SI-5 had access to them.”

“SI-5 was the personal military, right?” Teller whispers, and Bob murmurs back an affirmative. “Shit.”

“So someone's trying to kill you, and they want you to know,” Lovelace summarizes. 

“And they'll probably come after you next,” Jacobi says. “So if Mark Midland gets blown to bits, it's time to play the Paranoia Game again, my dear Captain.”

“Okay, let me get this straight,” Teller interrupts. “Your name is really Lovelace, and _your_ name is really Jacobi, and you were the ones that brought down motherfucking _Goddard Futuristics_ , and now someone is trying to kill you.”

“Someone one hundred percent willing to write you off as collateral damage, yes.” Jacobi throws the big glass pieces away and snags a roll of paper towels off the counter for the wine.

“Is your apartment safe, Daniel?” Lovelace asks. Her voice is soft, and Jacobi has never earned softness from her. 

“Probably not,” he admits.

“You can stay here tonight,” she says, “all of you.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, wait, hold on—”

Jacobi cuts him off. “Bob, you're part of this conspiracy to end conspiracies now. They will kill you, not because you did anything, but because it might cause me any pain at all, and even if it doesn't, it's one less possible loose end.”

And it would hurt him. He's been trying to ignore it for weeks, _months_ , but it would hurt to lose these two idiots. He likes them, for some reason. 

Lovelace herds Teller and Bob out of the kitchen and sends them for her spare bedding, giving her and Jacobi the illusion of privacy. 

“How's Minkowski?” Jacobi asks. “She and her husband ever—”

“Five eighty-eight,” Lovelace says, and Jacobi curses. “We haven’t been enemies in a long time, Daniel, you don’t need to do that. But, yes, Renée and Dominik are fine.” There’s a beat of silence where Jacobi dumps the wine-soaked paper towels in the trash and uses a clean one to sweep the smaller bits of glass together. “He started remembering.”

A shard of glass punches through the paper towel into Daniel’s hand and he yelps, checking the wound for debris before sticking it in his mouth. The salt-copper taste is horrific and familiar. “What to you mean he started remembering?”

“I mean what I said. He keeps asking about you.”

“Did you tell him?”

“I didn’t tell either of them. But you will.”

Yeah, he expected that. “I’m not going to work tomorrow, am I?”

“I would call out, yeah.”

“Hey, boss!” Jacobi raises his voice. “I’m not gonna make it to work tomorrow, I’m sick and very contagious!”

“That’s a bad joke, Midland!” Teller calls back. “And Bob is already calling in favors to get all our asses covered tomorrow.” He appears in the doorway to the kitchen, arms full of sheets. “What I want to know is why make this personal? Why something that you would recognize like this? Why _scare_ you?”

“Probably because I betrayed SI-5 and we had a very specific way to deal with traitors,” Jacobi tells him, and waits for the inevitable understanding.

“You were one of the bad guys?” Teller asks after a long silence. Bob is dumbstruck in the background.

“ _‘Were’_ is the key word there,” Isabel says. “Note the whole traitor thing? We’d be dead without him.” 

“I don’t want anyone else dead because of me.” Daniel can hear a gunshot echo in his ears, three years and seven light years later. “Feel free to fire me after this is all over but, please, I don’t want to lose another team.”

Teller turns to look at Radio Bob and they have a rapid discussion with their eyebrows. “I won't fire you,” Teller announces when it's over. “But you have to promise there's no more reality shaking secrets you're keeping from us.”

Jacobi and Lovelace exchange looks. “Aliens are real?” Isabel offers.

Teller inhales through his nose, long and deep, exhales just as slow. “The worst part? I know you're not fucking with me.” 

“Not even a little,” Jacobi sighs. 

It takes long, awkward minutes, but Teller and Bob finally start setting up in the living room of Lovelace's apartment. Lovelace herself grabs a first aid kit and finishes cleaning up while Jacobi bandages his hand. 

“Why did you run?” Lovelace finally asks.

“Anger. Guilt. Hate. Pick one.”

“I want the one that's true.”

“Grief,” he admits, well aware his two colleagues could hear. “Alana was gone, Kepler abandoned me, and there was nothing left for me. So I left. I handled their death certificates and wills and all the legal shit and… and included my name with them. Legally, Daniel Jacobi is dead. Mark Midland isn't.”

“Why didn't you come back?”

“You heard Teller.” Jacobi picks at the edge of the bandage. “I'm the only bad guy left. You didn't need me around Doug.”

“We want you around now.” She leans against the counter next to him. 

“When you play with fire, Captain,” he tells her, “you always get burned.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr as boxonthenile and twitter as @nile_speaks
> 
> Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol Manual Tip 588: Shows of courtesy and polite queries are an efficient way to gain time necessary to strategize.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DID SOMEONE SAY FOUND FAMILY, SOFT ANGST™, AND JACOFFEL?
> 
> No?
> 
> Welp, I did it anyway.

_Those last planning moments give Daniel an insane courage. He's terrified and angry and so, so hurt, but he grabs Eiffel's jumpsuit with both hands and kisses him hard, right there on the deck of the Sol._

_“If we survive this, I'll buy you a drink,” Daniel promises._

_“I'm holding you to that,” Doug says, and kisses him back._

 

* * *

 

Lovelace almost literally drags Jacobi to her car the next morning, shoving him bodily into the back seat. He yanks the other door handle.

“Am I _child locked_ into the car?” he shouts through the aluminum. Teller and Radio Bob start to snicker.

“Yep!” Lovelace tells him brightly.

“When?”

“Just after the New Year.” Lovelace gestures to the rest of the bomb squad, then her car. Teller shakes his head, still snickering, and points to his own. She nods and turns her attention back to Jacobi. “I figured it was only a matter of time before you showed up drunk or something and I had to drag you home anyway.”

“Kidnapping!”

She rolls her eyes and rounds the car. “We'll go to Starbucks or something on the way.”

Jacobi sulks. “I want a macchiato.”

“Put on your seatbelt, Daniel.” 

They do actually get Starbucks. The barista at the window looks harried and slightly panicked. Daniel leans around Lovelace to shove ten dollars in their tip jar.

“For the Pride pin and because the guy behind me is an ass.”

“It's not even good order etiquette,” they whisper, horrified. “Is it four shots or five?”

“As his coworker, literally, it does not matter.”

“Oh thank god!” someone in the building says.

Daniel goes quiet after that, though, staring down at the paper cup. He doesn’t know how to face them, doesn’t know what to say or how to explain. He _couldn’t_ face them, two years ago, when the danger finally passed and he felt his grief full force. 

So he vanished into the night like some fairytale villian, blew up a couple SI-5 safehouses, and buried three empty caskets in his hometown. He didn’t go back to the Minkowski/Koudelka household, where Doug and his stupid innocent eyes were. Fooling around with someone who was already an asshole was far different than corrupting what was essentially a new person. 

_He started remembering,_ Isabel had said the night before. Did he remember everything Daniel had done?

Did he remember the drink? 

Did he remember the _kiss_?

Gravel crunches under the tires as Isabel turns into the Minkowski/Koudelka driveway, and Daniel hunches lower in the backseat. The windows are tinted, he can escape notice a little longer.

The front door opens as Isabel climbs out and Minkowski herself steps onto the porch. “Isabel? What are you doing here? It's Wednesday, not Friday. Who's in the other car?”

Daniel watches through the window as Teller and Bob get out of their car. “Remember the piece about the bomb squad I wrote a couple months ago? Meet Simon Teller, Robert Hansen, and…”

Daniel's door jerks open and Isabel grips his arm like a vice, dragging him, swearing, from the back seat. Both Minkowski’s hands cover her mouth. “Mark Midland,” Isabel finishes. 

“Daniel Jacobi, you son of a bitch!” Minkowski shouts, bounding down the steps. Teller recognizes a force of nature and scrambles to get out of her way. Daniel braces for the hit that's coming, knowing it's futile to run.

Renée throws her arms around his shoulders and holds as tightly as she can. Daniel finds himself hugging her back. “Hello, Lieutenant,” he says.

“You absolute _asshole_ ,” she sniffs. She's _crying_ , over _him_ , and he doesn't know how to deal with that. He'd never had someone care enough to cry over him. He pats her back awkwardly.

“Renée, move,” comes the furious order, and Douglas Eiffel sweeps down from the house like an oncoming storm. Renée steps aside immediately, and Daniel takes a step back. 

“Look, Eiffel—” and Doug grabs the front of his jacket and shoves him back against the car.

“Shut up, Daniel,” he says, and kisses him.

It lacks the desperate fear of their first kiss, and Daniel is a little dazed when it breaks. “So… hi?”

“You're an idiot,” Doug tells him, “and you have a lot of explaining to do.”

 

* * *

 

_The first thing Jacobi does when the haze lifts from his mind is scream._

_Or, he wants to, but the last thing he can afford to do is draw attention to himself, so he bites his tongue until it hurts and takes stock._

_Eiffel said he would be in the storage room forty-five minutes ago. The odds he's still there are slim, but he has to try._

_Eiffel is there, harried and half panicked and so goddamn beautiful, and Jacobi lets the comms officer stammer out half his plan before grabbing his face and kissing him._

_He's alive, they're both alive, and Jacobi wants, **needs** to remind himself of that. Doug kisses back a moment later, just as scared and desperate. _

_Jacobi allows himself a moment, a **second** of this terrified bid for reassurance before pulling away. “Okay, I have a better idea.”_

 

* * *

 

They all end up sitting around Minkowski’s kitchen table after introductions, Daniel looking profoundly uncomfortable and tapping his fingers against the tabletop. 

“Why now?” Renée finally asks. “Obviously Isabel wasn't hunting you down after, so why come back now, and bring them?”

“Eighteen hours ago, we got a call about a suspicious package in a subway station. It was evacuated, and we went in to either disarm or safely detonate.” Jacobi pulls in a breath and holds it. “It was mine. My design, my build, my fucking _color choices_ —a perfect replica of a bomb I built for SI-5 several years ago. Someone from SI-5 not only evaded arrest, but also _found me_ and decided to carry out the Aleski Protocol.”

“Aleski Protocol?” Teller echoes. 

“When someone betrays Goddard, SI-5 carries out the Aleski Protocol. You _kill them_ , you make sure they know who's doing it, and you do it with panache.” Daniel stands, unable to keep still anymore and lacking his usual fidgets. “I'd say my own bomb is pretty fucking ‘panache’.”

“And the rest of your squad and possibly a plethora of civilians is an acceptable collateral?” Radio Bob clarifies. 

Daniel remembers the way Klein slumped to the floor, an _acceptable collateral._

“Yes,” Lovelace says flatly when he doesn’t respond. 

“So, we find who’s trying to kill you and we turn them in,” Teller says, like it’s easy. “Then we go back to normal, except for, um…”

“The fact you work with one of the bad guys?” Daniel finishes.

“Jacobi,” four voices chide in unison. Teller and Bob jerk, looking around for a woman they aren’t going to see.

“Hello, Hera,” Daniel says. “I was wondering where you were.”

“Technically, my central processor is in the basement, but I do have visuals and wireless speakers everywhere in the house. I’ve been busy running background checks and Facebook stalking your coworkers.”

“That’s Hera, our AI,” Doug tells the two dumbstruck bomb techs. 

Teller shakes his head and rolls his shoulders back, gets that manic glint in his eyes as he treats the situation like the ticking time bomb it is. “That makes this so much more insane. What's our next move?”

“ _My_ next move,” Daniel corrects. “You two are laying low where they can't get you.”

“Oh, bullshit, Midland—”

Daniel slams his hands on the table. “I won't lose you, too!” 

There's a long moment where the only sound is the fading ring of his shout. Then, slowly, Radio Bob stands and walks around the table to pull Daniel into a hug.

“Mark. Daniel. Whichever. We're professionals, okay? I don't know… everything that happened, but we know how to handle explosives. If that's all they've got to throw at us, we'll deal. And if it isn't, well, we'll deal with that, too. We're your team.”

“Our job is to have your back,” Teller affirms. “So _let us_. We aren't letting you do this alone.”

“Sounds like you've got a good team there, Jacobi,” Minkowski says softly once Radio Bob has let him go.

“Yeah,” he agrees, throat tight. “You owe me twenty bucks.”

“So, what's the plan?” Doug chimes in. 

“Good question, but first!” Teller points at Daniel. “What the fuck do we call you?”

“On the job, I have to stay Midland,” Daniel tells him. “ _Off_ the job, I can be whatever?”

“Daniel,” four voices say in unison once more.

“I cannot use your first name, I will die,” Teller says. “Jacobi it is.”

“Can we please get back on topic?” Daniel sighs. “Someone _is_ trying to kill me.”

“So, your typical Tuesday?” Lovelace asks.

“I don't have to answer that,” he replies, immediate and indignant, and his chest seizes. 

Sometimes, he still misses Alana _so fucking much_.

Minkowski accepts a twenty dollar bill from her husband and passes it over. “He has a point, though. What do we do?”

Daniel takes the twenty and taps the edge against the table. “I might have an idea, but no one is going to like it.”

“So, _our_ typical Tuesday?” Doug says, and Daniel smirks.

This is going to go poorly, and he's counting on it.

 

* * *

 

Teller and Bob take to the ex-Hephaestus Crew with incredible ease. Teller's unique brand of emotional dysregulation and the way Bob plays off it fit surprisingly well with the functional chaos that follows Minkowski and her crew. Daniel watches Teller try and arm wrestle Lovelace while Hera and Bob cheer them on.

Doug leans against the counter next to him. This is probably the point where they talk, but Daniel has never been good at that.

“So.” Doug drags out the 'o’, shifting uncomfortably.

“So,” Daniel echoes. “You, uh. Remember.”

“Not everything. I know that, that _something_ is missing, a few somethings, but… I remember the kiss.”

“Which one?”

“There's more than one?”

“Counting today? There's three.”

Doug is quiet for a second, brow furrowed, before he shakes his head. “The _Sol_. You said if we survived you owed me a drink, though I'm gonna request dinner instead.”

“That's, uh, reasonable.” Daniel winces as Lovelace stops toying with Teller and slams his hand against the table. “That was the second. The first… Do you remember sticking me with Isabel's blood?” 

He sees Bob straighten a little, and knows he's listening.

“Yeah, and waiting for you. You were late, Kepler showed up–” wait, what–“and then you came and yelled at me and–oh.”

“Yep.” Daniel has played that kiss over in his head hundreds of times in the past two years, frightened and hungry and adrenaline drunk. He doesn't regret either of them, but he's never really done _relationships_ very well. His record with Klein and Kepler speaks for itself, and that's not counting the years _before_ SI-5.

“What does that make us?” Doug asks softly.

He shrugs. “It doesn't have to make us anything.”

“What if I want it to?”

“ _One_ disaster at a time.” 

Doug laughs, and it's not the sarcastic or nervous or bitter laughter Daniel has heard before. It's brighter, lighter, _better_ , and it scares the hell out of him, because it reminds him of why he ever wanted the idiot in the first place. 

This was a mistake.

“Mid–Jacobi!” Teller calls, and both Doug and Daniel jump. “What's this about ducks?”

“Lovelace, I'm gonna fucking kill you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.
> 
> The Starbucks barista is a self insert bc The Radio Bob Special triggers my fight or flight response and I have to bitch about it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How y'all been, I've been working on this instead of my valentine's gift to my rvb friends
> 
> Knitcobi makes an appearance in this chapter. What is Knitcobi? Find answers [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17309312).
> 
> Enormous shout out to my gf HappyLeech for the fight scene help!

So the plan is this:

Bomb Squad Unit 214(and Hera rants about dramatic irony and how much she hates it for forty-five minutes) goes back to work like nothing is wrong, except for now they have an AI monitoring the calls they receive. The only way to ensure Daniel is the one to respond to the ten forty-five is make the call themself, and Hera will be able to notify them when a call is fake.

There's only six SI-5 agents that were a part of the mission that first used Daniel's design. He is one. Two are dead. That leaves Napier's team: Major Felix Napier, Ada Cauchy, and Cayley Perelman. Daniel is betting on Napier; he'd been enamored with Daniel and his design. Honestly, Daniel might have tumbled into his bed after the mission if it hadn't been for his recent breakup with Klein.

But, he digresses. Napier had both the knowledge and motive. All they had to do now was wait for him to make his move.

For the next two days, every single call is legitimate.

By the end of day three, Daniel is antsier than ever. He has everyone in his apartment and he's pacing a rut into the floor. Renee, Isabel, and Dominik are all curled together on his couch(and when did they happen?), Doug is seated on the floor critiquing Daniel's movie collection, and Bob and Teller are hovering near the living room window.

“Daniel, calm down,” Hera chides. She's calling in through Minkowski's cell phone propped up on the coffee table. “Isn't this a good thing?”

“Maybe they just wanted to scare you?” Doug offers.

“Not how we operate,” he mutters.

“They.”

“What?” Daniel looks at Lovelace.

“They. You're not SI-5 anymore.”

“It's not really something you stop being.” He's not sure he ever can put that behind him, really. There's too much blood on his hands.

“Nah, she's right,” Radio Bob says, not looking up from where he's playing on his phone. “You finished probation. You're one of us now.”

Daniel files that under “Deal With Later” like almost everything else these past few days. Doug sighs and grabs for the backpack he brought.

Daniel's fingers twitch when he sees the yarn Doug pulls out. “Those needles are too big for lace weight, dumbass.”

“Well, if you don't want it–” Doug snorts as Daniel drops cross-legged to the floor and snatches the yarn and knitting needles from his hands. He can't even actually make anything with this, but he finds the end of the yarn and casts on anyway.

“Hold on, Dan, you knit?” Radio Bob joins them on the floor. 

“Don't call me that, and yes.”

“Lots of veterans learn to knit,” Dominik chimes in from the couch. “Stress relief.”

“You should all take it up,” Isabel deadpans, and Daniel snickers.

“Miss Sobrero,” Teller gasps, “are you implying that we, one of the bomb squads of New York City, are overly stressed?”

“I think all of you are insane, actually, which is why Daniel fits in.”

“Dan the Explosion Man,” Doug teases, and Daniel shoves him over.

“Whatever happened to the sweater?” Hera asks, and Doug must have bought high quality needles because they don't snap in his grip.

“Still have it,” he mutters. “Stitch pulled loose, so I don't wear it anymore. I could fix it, but. But it wouldn't feel like hers anymore.”

“Her?” Bob echoes. “Oh, the Alana you mentioned.”

“Alana Maxwell,” Daniel says, voice soft but steady. “My fault.”

“Our fault,” Minkowski corrects, just as gentle. “Don't make me take my twenty back.”

“I'm living with it. I–I went to grief counseling, actually. For both of them. Imagine that.”

Renée slides off the couch to sit next to him and hugs him again. He wonders if he'll ever be used to that. “That's a good idea, I should try it.”

“You should,” he says, and tips backwards. He knits above his face for a moment. “Why did I stop doing this?”

Radio Bob scoots closer. “I don't know. Show me?”

Daniel ends up with Bob, Teller, Doug, and Renée crowded next to him, watching as he knits neat, simple rows. He'll need to dig all his patterns out of storage. 

He doesn't realize the anxiety has let up until everyone has gone home and he doesn't go straight for the whiskey hidden in his cupboards.

Fucking _Eiffel_. Daniel's falling head over heels, and he's surprisingly unafraid.

 

* * *

 

_“Unit 214, Unit 214, we have a ten forty-five near the harbor.”_

Jacobi's phone buzzes. 

_**Hera:** this is it boys_

“Have I ever told you guys about my friend Aleski?” Jacobi asks, as though he's musing aloud. He picks up on the particular drawl his voice takes on and pretends it doesn't make his stomach turn.

“I think so, yeah.” Teller is a quick study as always. He starts the EOD van and turns towards the harbor. 

The warehouse is abandoned and dilapidated and Daniel is almost offended by the cliché. Cutter would have been proud. Or would have thrown him off the roof. Possibly both. 

There’s no police tape. “Panache,” Daniel mutters. He leans forward to press his head into the dashboard.

“Dan?” Bob asks at the same moment Teller says, “Jacobi?”

“On the job,” Daniel mutters into the plastic of the dash. “And I’m fine. Just… trying to remember everything I can about Napier.”

“And what do you remember?”

“That I’m better at explosives than him. He could follow a blueprint but IEDs are an _art_ , boss, one that can’t be taught.”

“You’re terrifying, Midland. They’re here.”

Bob opens the side door of the van on the side opposite the warehouse as Dominik’s sensible little compact pulls from the flow traffic of the street to park near the next warehouse, just barely out of sight of the _living cliche_ that is apparently now Daniel’s life.

Lovelace steals swiftly across the space, keeping the van between her and, hopefully, Napier’s line of sight. She climbs into the van. “Step two?” she says.

“Step two.”

Four minutes later, three figures slip out of the van. Two are in EOD suits, layers of kevlar and plastic rendering them unidentifiable. They stride with purpose towards the warehouse. The third darts towards the river, around the side of the warehouse. They swear as they realize there's no side door and spot a window on the second level. With a sigh, they start to climb.

Inside, Teller is chattering away, some inane story about poker with Bob a year ago. His companion hums at the right moments, clearly uninterested. Both of them draw to halt at the sight of the bomb.

It sits on a large table in the center of the warehouse. It's horribly dramatic, and Jacobi is now officially offended. This isn't panache, it's just _ostentatious_.

And, if he remembers correctly, not Napier's style.

 

* * *

 

_“–and this is Major Felix Napier, the CO of this team.”_

_Daniel holds his place at Kepler's side, but offers his hand. “A pleasure, Major Napier.”_

_“The pleasure is mine, Mister Jacobi.” Major Napier shakes his hand, leaning in with a smile. “I understand that today we're testing a design of yours? I saw the blueprints. That device is a **beauty** ; elegant, if I may say, even with all the redundancies.”_

_“Felix appreciates elegance,” Cauchy says slyly. “He's not one for the garish and gaudy.”_

_“A trait not shared with my colleagues,” Napier bemoans._

_Perelman shrugs. “What can we say, Major? Go big or go home.”_

 

* * *

 

Daniel hoists himself through the window, stepping near-silently to the shadowed scaffolding against the rear wall. He surveys the room and flips rapid fire through emotions–offence, then confusion, then horror.

It's not Napier.

“You always did like to stay in someone else's shadow.” The voice comes from below him, under the scaffold, and Cayley Perelman steps into the light.

Daniel feels his breath leave him. _Cayley_. If Napier had enamored with Daniel, Perelman had been _starstruck_ for Alana. She'd been devastated when Alana turned her down. 

Perelman keeps talking. “What's wrong, Jacobi? Did you lose that quick wit when you lost Kepler? Anyone with eyes could see he had you on a leash.”

Lovelace, in the EOD suit, stays quiet.

“Does your new team know what happened to the last one? How you weren't good enough to save them? To save _her_?” Perelman is trembling with the force of her anger.

Jacobi flinches, chest aching like he's been stabbed. He drops neatly off the edge of the scaffold, and Perelman whips around, drawing a gun and leveling it at his chest.

“Last time someone pulled a gun on me, it was Cutter,” Daniel says dryly. “Hello, Miss Perelman.”

“Daniel fucking Jacobi,” she hisses. “You have a lot to answer for.”

“This isn't about Goddard,” Daniel says. “It's not about SI-5, either. So why Aleski?”

“Why _you?_ ” Perelman spits. “Why did _you_ come back? Why not–”

“Do you think I don't ask myself that?” Daniel interrupts. “Every day. It _should_ have been her. It _should_ have been Alana. But it wasn't, and she's _gone,_ Cayley. I loved her, too, but she's gone. Let her go.”

“ _No_. Not until she's avenged. She told me she trusted you to keep her safe, and you didn't, so I'm going to make sure you pay for it.” Perelman laughs, harsh and hurt. “You betrayed her. That's why Aleski.” She shifts one hand off her firearm to tap her watch. “Indigo-Echo-Delta, voice confirmation Cayley Perelman.”

The bomb on the table beeps.

“Cayley, are you nuts?” Daniel yells. “You're gonna kill us all!” He throws himself to side a heartbeat later as she tries to shoot him.

Teller sprints to the table, skidding to a stop inches before he hits it. “Uh, Jacobi? This isn't the one you briefed us on.”

“Little busy, boss,” Daniel shouts back. He attempts to duck under Perelman's arm and wrestle the gun from her grasp, but they overbalance and go toppling to the ground. The gun skitters just out of reach, under the scaffold, and from the corner of his eye he sees Lovelace take half a step towards them before Teller grabs her arm.

“Oh no, Miss Lovelace, you're with me. We get to be police officers today. Bob, can you see this?”

Jacobi can't hear the response through the EOD helmet, but he still hesitates, giving Perelman the advantage. She flips them over and lunges for her gun. Before she gets far, Jacobi wraps an arm around her waist and slams the heel of his other hand into her chest. She yelps, but it doesn't have the effect Jacobi was hoping for.

She's wearing SI-5's standard issue body armor under her clothing, and while Jacobi himself isn't unprotected, the Hazardous Devices Unit's kevlar doesn't quite measure up.

He becomes intimately aware of this when Perelman drives her knee into his gut.

At the table, Teller is trading explosive technobabble faster than Lovelace can follow. She's built bombs before, but this is way out of her league. She leaves it to the professionals and follows orders when Teller commands her to help pry the casing free.

“Dan, there's a countdown!” she yells.

Jacobi struggles to catch his breath and keep his hold, but Perelman wrests free. She scrambles for her sidearm, and Jacobi rolls and grabs her ankle, yanking her off balance. She comes crashing back down with a shriek, Jacobi tries to get to his feet, but Perelman bowls him over. Her hands close around his throat.

Daniel didn't want to kill anyone. He'd been hoping that, between him and Lovelace, they could just subdue whoever was after him and turn them in. He realizes this is no longer an option. 

He fights against Cayley's grip, one hand wrapped around her wrist, trying to pull it free. The other works its way under him, to the knife strapped to the small of his back. He's never liked knives; they're too personal, too close. There's no way to hide from the shock and pain in her eyes when he stabs it into her thigh. It's enough to throw her off and scrabble for the gun, fingers closing around the grip. 

He twists around and fires. This close, even Goddard's body armor can't stop a bullet.

Cayley is dead before she hits the ground, Daniel's knife slipping from her grasp. A second later, Teller shouts, “All clear!”

Daniel flicks the safety on and drops the gun, tipping back to lay on the floor and catch his breath. “Dammit, Cayley.”

Lovelace pulls off the EOD helmet and drops it to the concrete. She skirts the body and the growing pool of blood. “Daniel?”

“Please don't drop pieces of the EOD suits, that shit’s expensive.”

She laughs softly and offers a hand. “Who was she?” Isabel asks.

“Cayley Perelman.” Daniel takes her hand and lets her pull him to his feet. “She was part of Napier's team. She, uh, she thought she was in love with Alana, but Alana was aro-spec and turned her down. I never thought about her again.”

Isabel catches him as he tips into her side. “Last time we did this you were bleeding out.” A beat. “She didn't–”

“I'm okay. Might have to buy a turtleneck for work.”

Teller scoops the abandoned helmet off the ground and clears his throat. “So... does this count towards my record if it was never technically called in?”

Daniel scowls. “Really, boss? Really? _Now_?”

“I'm _coping_ , Jacob-land. I just saw you shoot someone while I was elbow deep in a bomb with an untrained civilian as backup. Who do we call about that? Are you gonna be okay?”

“Minkowski has been trying to get ahold of the people who handled our bullshit two years ago, and what do you mean?”

“Midla–Jacobi. _Daniel_. You just killed a person.”

“I know. I wish I hadn't needed to but I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.”

“That's. That's kinda fucked up. That's really fucked up.”

“Professional vaguely terrible person,” Isabel mutters, and Daniel starts snickering.

“Oh, ow, hurts to laugh,” he groans. “Let's get out here.”

 

* * *

 

After a lot of discussion, there is alcohol at the celebration party, but it's not to leave the Minkowski-Koudelka kitchen, which Doug is promptly banned from. Daniel throws back three shots of whiskey before it hits his system and he finds himself sprawled on the couch, comfortably buzzed, with his head on Doug's lap. 

“Hey.” Radio Bob sits on the floor in front of the couch and gently pats Daniel's knees. “You coherent?”

“Gonna take more than a couple shots of cheap whiskey to get me blackout, Bob. What's up?”

“You said you met… Napier? In Istanbul. What happened?”

“I don't tell stories,” Daniel says immediately. 

“Aww, come on, Jacobi,” Teller wheedles. 

“I'd like to hear it,” Doug says, combing his fingers through Daniel's hair. It's nice. He can't remember ever being this comfortable with Kepler.

“I don't. Tell. Stories.”

“Because you pick up his cadence?” 

Daniel sits up to glare at Renée. “How.”

She shrugs. “You did it when you were telling us about the Aleski protocol. Don't think you even noticed.” She snorts as Daniel drops his head back to Doug's thigh, frustrated. “You shouldn't let him stop you from doing things.”

“Who?” Bob is incredibly transparent, but Daniel doubts he's even trying to disguise his push for information.

“Colonel Warren Kepler, may he fuck himself in hell,” Daniel says. “And fine. But I need another drink.”

“I think there's scotch in my office–” Dominik offers, but Daniel cuts him off.

“Absolutely the fuck not.” He ducks into the kitchen, takes the bottle of whiskey when Isabel hands it over, and downs half of it before giving it back. He turns on his heel and steps back into the living room. “Istanbul. It was about… six years ago. Kepler, Alana, and I were field testing an explosive I designed and Goddard decided to kill two birds with one stone. Napier's team was doing clean-up, and what better way to destroy evidence than to blow it straight to hell? So…”

He tells the story. Then Dominik takes over with one of his own, stealing the spotlight, and Doug bends awkwardly to kiss Daniel's hair.

They're not family, the people in this room, but, one day? Daniel thinks, maybe, they could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What should I write next in this 'verse? 100% more pining and 70% less murder? Grief Counseling? Vote now on your phones.


End file.
